By Robert W. Welkos
Reprinted from The Quill, Novemeber-December 1991, pp.36-38

In the late spring of 1990, shortly before the Los Angeles Times
published a comprehensive series on the "Church" of Scientology by
staff writer Joel Sappell and myself, a deliveryman arrived at my
house and propped a large manila envelope against my front door.
It was from a mortuary, and inside was a brochure extolling the
benefits of arranging your funeral before you die.

"Investigate the pre-arrangement program at our memorial park
now," the brochure read. "You'll be glad you did, and so will your
family."

Curious, I telephoned the mortuary and asked why they had sent me
the material. To my amazement, they didn't know they had and told
me they never sent brochures unsolicited because it can be
upsetting. They assured me they were always sensitive to such
concems and that it would not happen again.

But it did.

Two days later, my wife caught a glimpse of a man hurrying down
the front walk. By the time she opened the door, he was driving
away, but left on the step was another envelope from the same
mortuary.

I would never know if the deliveries were just a mix-up or a
sinister prank. Just as I have never known who made the dozens of
hang-up telephone calls to my house; what caused my partner's dog
to go into seizures on the day the Times published the secret
teachings of Scientology; why a bogus assault complaint was filed
with the Los Angeles Police Department against Sappell by a man
whose address and name proved to be phony, or why car dealers we
had never dealt with were making inquiries into our personal
credit reports.

Yet, I wondered: Were these incidents more than coincidence?

Whenever journalists ask critical questions about Scientology they
can expect to endure intense personal scrutiny. Over the years,
various reporters have been sued, harassed, spied on, and even
been subjected to dirty tricks.

Our investigation of Scientology began in 1985. The undertaking
stretched over five difficult years and tested the will of the
newspaper as we were repeatedly subject to the "church"'s
intimidative tactics.

In the end, we published 24 stories over six days, exploring
virtually every facet of Scientology, from its confidential
doctrines to its abuses against former members to the fictional
background of its founder. the late science fiction writer L.

Ron Hubbard. The series also revealed how Scientologists had
created numerous tax-exempt front groups and profit-making
consulting firms to spread their beliefs throughout American
society, and how Hubbard's remarkable string of 22 bestsellers was
accomplished, in part, through multiple purchases of his books by
Scientologists and employees of Hubbard's publishing house, which
is controlled by "church" members.

The story took us across the U.S. and into Canada, interviewing
hundreds of people, reviewing thousands of pages of documents, and
studying the arcane writings of Hubbard himself.

Along the way we were sued once and successfully fought two
federal court subpoenas served by Scientology to gain access to
our research.

At various times, we were investigated by as many as three
separate teams of private investigators nired by Scientology's
attomeys. Up to the week of publication, the newspaper continued
to receive letters from "church" lawyers threatening suits. I was
sued by a "church" paralegal for false imprisonment after he
served me with a subpoena inside the newspaper and I told him to
wait in an editor's of fice until security arrived and determined
how he entered the building.

Outside the "church's" Golden Era Studios in Riverside,
California, a Times photographer stopped his car on a public
highway and began taking pictures of the compound when he was
confronted by uniformed Scientology guards with walkietalkies who
demanded that he surrender his film. He refused after a long and
tense confrontation, during which he was asked if he worked for
the CLA. Later, at a "church" facility in Hollywood, the
photographer parked on the street and began snapping pictures of
two Scientologists assigned to Scientology's Rehabilitation
Project Force - a kind of boot camp where members wear dark
armbands, run everywhere, and form menial tasks until their
superiors determine that they have been properly rehabilitated. As
the camera clicked, one of the men hurled a caustic substance at
the photographer's car, eroding the paint.

On one occasion, people we had interviewed for the series were
visited by private investigators posing as a film crew doing a
documentary on Scientology.

In the weeks after the series appeared, Scientology struck back.

It purchased advertising space on more than 120 billboards and
1,000 bus placards around Los Angeles. The ads, which prominently
included the newspaper's logo and our names, quoted from our
series, but they had edited the excerpts to create the false
impression that the Los Angeles Times was endorsing Scientology.
It was so strange for me to be driving to work each moming on the
freeway and then, in letters that looked 10 feet high, see my name
plastered on a gigantic billboard, or standing at a crosswalk and
glimpse my name whizzing past me on the side of a bus.

When Time magazine published a cover story about Scientology last
May 6, Time Associate Editor Richard Behar wrote that "at least 10
attorneys and six private detectives were unleashed by Scientology
and its followers in an effort to threaten, harass, and discredit
me." Behar said that a copy of his personal credit report with
detailed information about his bank accounts, home mortgage,
credit-card payments, home address, and Social Security number had
been illegally retrieved from a national credit bureau. Private
investigators contacted his acquaintances and neighbors. He was
subpoenaed by one attoney and he said another falsely suggested
that he might own shares in a company he was reporting about.

A Miami private investigator, working for Scientology attorneys,
posed as a woman whose niece was a Scientologist and sought advice
on how to deal with her and the "church".

"They have unleashed private eyes on most of the sources that were
named in the story," Behar said in an interview.

On the public front, Scientology reportedly spent over $3 million
to run daily ads in USA Today. One ad blasted Time by claiming the
magazine had once supported Adolph Hitler and his Nazi regime. The
"church" also mailed out thousands of copies of an 80-page booklet
entitled "Fact vs. Fiction," in which it attempted to correct
"falsehoods" in Behar's article. Such attempts are known as "dead
agenting" in Scientology.

Behar's experience was not unique.

When Linda Stasi of New York Newsday wrote a sharp-tongued gossip
column about Scientology and mentioned Time's upcoming cover
story, she received a letter from a man identifying himself as a
U.S. Customs Service agent at Kennedy Airport. "He said my name
and both of my reporters [Dough Vaughan and Anthony Scaduto] were
going on their computer and he would personally see we underwent
full body searches and rectal examinations until they found drugs
or contraband on us the next time we went through customs," Stasi
recalled.

Alarmed, the newspaper's executives referred the matter to the
Customs Service for investigation. Not long afterward, executives
said, an Fsl agent contacted them and said an individual whom he
did not name had complained that Newsday was having him harassed
and wanted the agency to investigate the newspaper. As of this
writing, the outcome of both probes is not known.

Stephen Koff, a staff writer at the Sr. Petersburg Times, said
that after he began investigating Hubbard's "church" in 1988, a
car dealership in California checked out his personal credit
report, as did a sculptor, who has since died. "My guess it was
really a private investigator [who checked out his credit]," Koff
said.

While in Los Angeles to report on the "church", Koffsaid, his wife
began receiving obscene phone calls late at night and people
claiming to work for credit card companies called wanting to know
personal information about him. A week after his series appeared,
he noticed a private investigator parked outside his house. At one
point, he peeked through the blinds and the car was gone.

"Almost two hours later, I'm leaving with my daughter to take her
to the baby sitter and I see the same car parked on a different
street but parked in such a way they could see my house." As he
drove off and got on a freeway the same car appeared in front of
him. Koff said he learned through police sources that the car had
been rented by a private investigator.

When Robert W. Lobsinger, publisher of the Newkirk Herald Journal
in Newkirk, Oklahoma, began writing biting editorials alerting
residents that Scientologists were quietly building a huge drug
rehabilitation center on a nearby Indian reservation, he also was
visited by private investigators on behalf of Scientology.

One "went to the sheriff's office poking around wanting all the
terrible bad criminal history on me, my wife, and kids."

Lobsinger recalled. "Of course, there isn't any. He wandered
around town talking to everybody else trying to get the goods or
me. They sent him down with a full-page ad to run in my paper and
a handful of hundred dollar bills to buy this ad. Of cou}se' the
ad was a condemnation of me for exposing Scientology and
insinuating that I was obviously a drug dealer and was a terrible
bad guy . . . So they took it to the daily paper 15 miles north of
us and they ran it up there." Lobsinger said Scientologists then
mailed the ad to Newkirk's 2,500 residents.

No matter where Scientology surfaces as a story, journalists can
expect to be targets of a "noisy" investigation.

"Remember," Hubbard wrote as far back as 1959, "intelligence we
get with a whisper. Investigation we do with a yell." In "The
Manual of Justice," Hubbard gave point-by-point instructions on
how to deal with a "bad magazine article." First, he wrote, "Tell
them by letter to retract at once in the next issue." The second
step, he said, is to "hire a private detective of a national-type
firm to investigate the writer, not the magazine, and get any
criminal or Communist background the man has." The third step is
to have lawyers write the magazine threatening suit, and then use
the information gleaned from the investigator to make the writer
"shudder into silence."

Using lawyers to attack its critics is standard Scientology
procedure. Among the millions of words Hubbard left to his
followers were precise directives on how to deal with critics and
the press:

"The purpose of the [lawsuit] is to harass and discourage rather
than win."

"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any
organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against
them to cause them to sue for peace . . . Don't ever defend.
Always attack."

"We do not want Scientology to be reported in the press, anywhere
else than on the "religious" pages of newspapers...

Therefore, we should be very alert to sue for slander at the
slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from
mentioning Scientology."

"NEVER agree to an investigation of Scientology. Only agree to an
investigation of the attacker . . . Start feeding lurid, blood,
sex crime, actual evidence on the attack to the press.

Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough,
rough on attackers all the way."

When British author Russell Miller wrote a critical biography of
Hubbard in 1988, an anonymous caller to police implicated Miller
in the unsolved axe slaying of a South London private eye.

Miller was interrogated by Scotland Yard, which later admitted the
investigation was a waste of time that had "caused Mr.

Miller some embarrassment."

The Sunday Times of London interviewed a private detective in 1987
who said he had been paid $2,500 by the "Church" of Scientology
for attempting to smear Miller. The private eye was quoted as
saying that he thought Miller was "at risk" and added:

"People acting for the "church" are willing to pay large sums for
men to discredit him. These bastards will stop at nothing."

When the St. Petersburg Times planned a review of another
biography that was critical of Hubbard, it received a letter from
a Scientology attomey threatening to sue the newspaper.

"We have evidence that your paper has a deep-seated bias against
the "Church" and that you intend to hit the "Church" hard with
this review," the letter from Los Angeles attomey Timothy Bowles
stated...."lf you forward one of his lies you will find yourself
in court facing not only libel and slander charges, but also
charges for conspiracy to violate civil rights. If you publish
anything at all on it, you may still find yourself defending
charges in court in light of what we know about your intentions.

We know a whole lot more about your institution and motives than
you think."

The newspaper published its review and Bowle's letter.

But the biggest horror story belongs to New York author Paulette
Cooper.

Cooper, who wrote a scathing 1972 book entitled The Scandal of
Scientology, was indicted on charges of making bomb threats
against the "church". The charges were eventually dismissed after
authorities discovered the "church" had obtained stationery she
had touched and used it to forge the bomb threats.

Today, when journalists launch investigations of Scientology, they
can expect to be contacted by the Office of Special Affairs, the
"church" unit responsible for countering outside threats. Attomeys
at OSA coordinate the activities of private detectives who gather
information and spy on "church" critics.

Journalists should know that even before they begin conducting
interviews with "church" officials, those officials are prepared
for them. Scientologists who regularly deal with the media are
drilled in how to handle questions. The "church" once issued a
bulletin on how to "cave in" a reporter by "shouting, banging,
pointing [and] swearing."

Scientologists also were instructed how to be "covertly hostile"
to a reporter: "He uses the word as a rapier and plunges it at the
reporter, so that the reporter introverts and drops the
questions."

Preparing for a hostile interview is one thing. Wondering whether
you've been targeted for harassment is another.

Several weeks before the publication of our series, I joined a
number of other Times' reporters for a drink and conversation at a
nearby watering hole. As we sat laughing and talking, I noticed a
woman sitting alone, facing me at a nearby table. Each time I
looked in her direction she glanced at her wristwatch, as if to
indicate she was waiting for a friend who never arrived.

She waited for well over an hour until I mentioned to another
reporter how odd it was.

As I headed home on the freeway I noticed a Califomia Highway
Patrol car swerving back and forth across the lanes, slowing
traffic to a crawl. He slipped in behind my car, and ordered me to
pull over. I asked the officer what I had done, and then saw there
were three more patrol cars lined up behind me, all with their
lights flashing.

After I was given a sobriety test, the officers huddled, then told
me to get going because I was sober. When I asked why I had been
stopped, one officer said they had received a report that I was
weaving and endangering other motorists.

The next day, I learned that the CHP had received a call over a
car phone from a man identifying himself as a former Los Angeles
police officer. He said he was following me and would direct the
officers to my location.

Oddly, he never gave his name.

My colleagues later said I was lucky I hadn't made any sudden
moves while getting out of my car. In a city plagued by freeway
shootings and gangs, cops get nervous.